


Cold Hard Cash

by Azrael



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azrael/pseuds/Azrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A behind the scenes look at S2, or, how I think canon really went.</p>
<p>**AN:  This series will not be updated as I've abandoned this fandom.  Thank you so much to everyone who's reviewed any of my fics or silently enjoyed them.  For those interested:  I'm getting rather obsessed with Loki/Thor from the Marvel movies verse and am working on a project there.  Thank you for all the support and I'm sorry I'm just not feeling Steve/Danny anymore.**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pennies On The Dollar

**Author's Note:**

> oops! This is a repost because I was looking this story over for comments and I realized that somewhere between posting and this morning I ended up repeating chapter two as a nonexitent (at this time) chapter 5. And then I accidentally deleted the whole thing. Sorry about that!
> 
> Anyway, thanks to Anyanka for her beta skills, which are excellent as always. She probably has forgotten she even did it as I wrote this months ago and then abandoned it in disgust at the way season 2 was playing out. 
> 
> Thankfully, Lori is gone although the completely inoffensive Gabby is still hanging around. She's a sweetie, but she's gotta go. Steve might kill her and hide her body otherwise and then where will we be?!

Steve McGarrett knows hate. He knows it very, very well and he uses it.

He still hates the Hesse brothers, despite Anton’s death and Victor’s humbling, both at his hand. He hates them for what happened to his father, of course he does, but he also hates them for the things they’ve done to make him hunt them in the first place. It’s the kind of burning, cleansing fire that’s driven him to chase all the international criminals and enemies he’s been pointed at throughout his entire career in the Navy. The orders come down; “This is the bad guy, these are the innocents. Kill one and protect the other at all costs.” It’s defined, simple, easy in a way other things couldn’t or shouldn’t be.

Steve has always known the difference, always seen the line between what’s necessary and what’s difficult and it always boils down to choice. The Hesse brothers are evil, therefore they must be neutralized, bam, simple decision, no real choice there. Chief Petty Officer Ramirez is an excellent SEAL, an asset to Steve’s team, but he also blurs the lines and takes the anger and violence home with him. Should Steve look the other way and continue to use Ramirez as a tool for the greater good or should he toss him to the wolves to save his wife and ten year old son, only two people, but innocent collateral damage?

That’s not so easy a decision, not at all, even though Steve hates himself a little because it should be.

CPO Ramirez had died in combat in an undisclosed location on a mission that never officially happened. Steve himself had handed the folded flag to Ramirez’s widow and, by then, twelve year old son. He had seen the guilty relief in both their eyes and almost flinched under their grateful gazes. He hadn’t, because that kind of tell can get you killed in the field, but his skin had crawled with the desire to.

He hates himself for choosing the greater good.

So yeah, Steve knows hate, knows the defined lines it exists within, knows its driving, hurricane force, knows the devastation it leaves in its wake. It’s an old friend to clutch close in solitary moments, a familiar flavor tasting of bittersweet satisfaction and the faint ash of regret. For him, hate, especially hate fueled by righteous anger, is as natural as breathing.

Love is another thing entirely.

As good as Steve is at hate, he’s pathetically inept at love. He dimly remembers that it wasn’t always this way. In another life he had found love to be second nature and hate a rare and abstract concept. It was another life that was torn away at fifteen when his world was ripped apart by his mother’s senseless death, his father’s selfish withdrawal, his sister’s blistering anger, and his own seething rage. After that, after grief and exile and loss, Steve had abandoned love as a way of life and never looked back.

He keeps himself just a little separate, just that tiny bit beyond reach, as a matter of habit. He prefers to be summarily alone, only reaching out in the most superficial of ways. He’ll trust his fellow SEALs with his life, but he won’t tell them how he misses the smell of sea salt and hibiscus in the wind. He won’t acknowledge that no matter what ocean he finds himself traveling, what jungle he treks through, none of them are quite _right._ He doesn’t let on that his insides have ached for his home state for twenty years and he has no idea what he’s going to do when that ache finally releases its hold on him, if it ever does.

He gets lonely of course, envies other people their easy camaraderie, their facility at personal connection. When the solitude becomes too much he smiles at a pretty girl in a bar or makes discreet, subtle eye contact with a man in the shadows and takes his nameless companion to a forgettable hotel room and fucks his loneliness back into hiding, sates his skin hunger for a few brief hours. It’s hollow and empty, he realizes this on some level, but it’s all he knows how to do.

It’s all he knows is safe.

There are a few regulars he gets together with whenever their orbits cross with his. Catherine from Naval Intelligence is good for favors that come cheap at a quick lay wherever and whenever they can manage it. She has the benefit of enjoying their time together thoroughly, making it fun and relaxing, yet expects nothing from him in the form of commitment. Her uncomplicated exuberance is what makes him meet up with her whenever they’re in port together, makes her his favorite.

Diane from Langley is possibly the only person Steve has ever met who is more disassociated from humanity than he is but can still function as a productive member of society. Well, she’s CIA, so productive might be overstating it, but she’s frighteningly good at her job and she gives head like a porn star so Steve ignores her more sociopathic tendencies. They’re so rarely on the same continent it hardly matters to him that he once saw her kill someone with a fondue fork and then successfully made it look like a freak accident with nobody the wiser. In truth, he likes her better as a killer than a lover, but she’s easy on the eyes and she doesn’t offer personal information or ask embarrassing questions he doesn’t want to answer. It works for them.

Jason is a ‘consultant’ with a private security company, so he’s basically a mercenary in a thousand dollar suit. He and Steve met in Somalia in 2002 and sort of accidentally had sex one day. Jason has an encyclopedic knowledge of advanced weaponry, no conscience whatsoever, and a wife and twin daughters who he loves borderline obsessively, which means he has as much if not more to lose than Steve does if their very occasional trysts become common knowledge. Of all Steve’s semi-regular lovers Jason is the one he personally likes the least, but he’s got a great ass and a sly smile and if they have nothing in common but an enjoyment of another male body in bed, well, neither of them is looking for hearts and flowers anyway. Jason is good to scratch that restless itch Steve gets when soft curves and perfumed skin aren’t what he wants on his menu. Honestly, most days he completely forgets Jason even exists. He’s positive the feeling is mutual.

So yeah, love is pretty much non-existent in Steve’s world.

That’s probably why this thing he started up with Danny is giving him vibes of impending disaster.

Steve’s been in lust with Danny pretty much from first sight, which is strange because he doesn’t usually go for short, mouthy, insubordinate guys in conservatively colored ties and sporting a hairstyle straight out of a Scorsese film. He doesn’t go for complicated. He avoids complicated as a lifestyle choice.

Jesus fuck is Danny complicated.

Never mind the ex-wife and daughter, or the tendency to spew vitriol about Steve’s beloved Hawaii. Never mind the harping on proper procedure and the constant questioning of Steve’s methods and sanity. Never mind as well Danny’s loyalty as a partner, his reliability, his intelligence, his sheer likability. Never mind he’s the first real friend Steve’s had since high school.

Never mind all that, because Steve can deal with that. What he can’t deal with is his own absorption with everything Danny Williams.

For instance Steve hates kids. They’re illogical, unpredictable, and his usual methods of ensuring compliance are definitely inappropriate when dealing with them. They get into everything, they don’t listen and they never take a command at face value. It’s always ‘why’ and ‘how come’ and ‘why can’t I’ and Steve generally avoids them whenever possible.

However, Steve finds Danny’s daughter Grace fascinating, purely for the reason that she’s Danny’s daughter. For one thing, she’s a veritable treasure trove of Danno-related intel and has no filter whatsoever, which is useful if you’re Steve McGarrett and have developed an inconvenient obsession with your partner. Steve eats up every morsel Grace drops for him and eagerly awaits more.

For another thing, Grace is mesmerizing in the way that she’s exactly like her Danno while at the same time being entirely her own person. Steve is enchanted by her and one of the purest pleasures of his new life is the sound of ‘Uncle Steve’ being said in tones of excitement by a little girl with her mother’s brown eyes and her father’s smile.

He’s also enamored with how Danny is with Grace. Danny as a father has Steve wishing his own dad had been such an appealing mix of strength, discipline, humor, and unconditional love. Steve has daddy issues, he knows this, but he doesn’t want Danny as a father figure, he just wants to be allowed to watch Grace and Danny have the relationship he never got to have with Jack.

So Steve’s a little fucked up, this isn’t news, but it is probably why he should have put Danny in his ‘not allowed’ box. Instead he had pushed him into a supply closet at work and blown him in a sneak attack that had shocked him as much as it had evidently shattered Danny’s preconceptions about his new boss into a million glittering shards.

Still, Steve has to admit that he can’t regret his moment of insanity because sex with Danny is pretty awesome.

Steve is used to relatively silent sex, which is to be expected when you generally only have it with combat trained people who view inadvertent vocalizations as a sign of weakness. Danny is loud. He talks from beginning to end and right on through to the next time when Steve loses his willpower and manhandles Danny into a secret space to have borderline violent fucks at completely inappropriate times. Hell, Danny even grumbles, huffs, and smirks when his mouth is stuffed full of Steve’s dick. If that’s not addictive Steve doesn’t know what is.

And it is. It’s addictive like he’s never known. He’s pretty sure heroin could never have the pull on him that Danny Williams does. It’s fucking terrifying is what it is.

So Steve sets some boundaries for himself, he leaves himself a safety net because he just _knows_ that carelessness with Danny will lead to a heartbreak he could never come back from. He knows what he should do is stop, that he’s already up to his neck in shark infested waters with no land in sight. But no matter what Steve scolds himself into resolving in the middle of the night alone in his empty bed, in the morning all his determination flies out the window at the first sight of Danny’s smile of welcome.

So he gives himself limits.

He won’t kiss Danny, he’ll only return a kiss if Danny offers one. There are times when Danny doesn’t offer, when they’re too hurried or too intense and it just doesn’t happen. Those times leave Steve hungry, because while he won’t initiate kisses they’re one of his favorite things about being with Danny.

Danny’s kisses are changeable depending on mood and context and Steve’s pretty sure he’s never experienced the same kiss twice. He catalogs them in his mind just as he catalogs every time he and Danny have ever come together, just as he catalogs every minute he’s ever spent with Danny since their off-center meeting in Steve’s garage.

So yeah, Steve will kiss back but he won’t kiss first.

The fact that he’s finding loopholes for his own rules is probably a bad sign.

Another of his limits is pretty standard for Steve’s usual MO of relationships. He tends to find his repeat lovers through work, so discretion is paramount. Steve’s used to compartmentalizing work relationships from everything else. It helps him to categorize and label different levels of intimacy to maintain his focus while still blowing off steam and relaxing into the brief respite of sex.

He’s having a little trouble with this one too, because Danny is part of every aspect of his life. It’s difficult to keeps things separate when the lines are already so blurred they may as well be nonexistent.

He spends all his work hours with Danny. They have meals together. They double up in Danny’s car together. They even, on occasion, hang out in Steve’s office and write heavily edited reports together. Basically they spend a minimum of ten hours together every work day.

Then there are the off hours.

After work they’ll grab dinner together most nights and then share a few beers on Steve’s lanai. He finds himself asking Danny hiking and going for experimental rides with him in the Marquis. On Danny’s Grace Weekends he engages in increasingly complex machinations to invite himself along on their adventures at least one day out of the two they get together. It’s laughably intrusive and overbearing, but Steve finds himself justifying his actions with the thinnest of pretenses in order to avoid two Danny-less days in a row because it makes him itchy and jumpy to go without seeing Danny for that long.

Out of self-preservation he keeps the fucking as short and impersonal as possible and there are rules for that too. For example, no sex in a bed, specifically Steve’s bed since Danny has a back breaking torture device to sleep on and Steve refuses to use it on principle. The no bed rule is very important because it means no excuse to cuddle or go slow and Steve doesn’t have to try to sleep in sheets smelling of Danny’s aftershave.

An addendum to the no bed rule is no sex in Steve’s house _period_ for much the same reasons. Steve obsesses enough about Danny while trapped in solitude in his house as it is. If he were to have memories of sliding sweat slick with Danny on his couch or in the kitchen, shower, or hell, up against the wall by the front door, Steve would never be able to extricate himself from Danny’s hold on him.

And it’s pretty inevitable that he’s going to have to because the longer this thing goes on the more Danny’s eyes show confusion, hurt and faint contempt. He knows his way isn’t Danny’s way, that Danny chases meaningful personal connections as voraciously as Steve avoids them. Therefore his time of being allowed to run his hands over the bits of Danny’s skin bared by hastily pushed aside clothing has a definite shelf life and he’s fast approaching the expiration date.

The really bad thing, the dangerous thing, is that Steve knows, _knows,_ that he could have more with Danny. He knows all he has to do is reach out to Danny and he’ll have him in his bed and house and heart, and that’s the stupid truth. It’s so tempting to reach across the space between their deck chairs in the twilight and pull Danny to him and, _God finally,_ strip Danny naked and tumble him into bed and spend hours just running hands and lips over all of him for as long he’ll tolerate it.

It’s a seductive scenario and Steve fucking _dreams_ about it, but it can’t ever happen. It can’t happen because Steve learned at fifteen that love, family and safety are things that only exist for other people. If he had that with Danny, opened his heart like that, it would all come crashing down eventually. It might take years, but it would happen and Steve would be destroyed, reduced to smoldering embers and left holding his eviscerated guts in his hands. He can’t risk it.

So he keeps himself just a little separate, just that tiny bit beyond reach, as a matter of habit. He no longer prefers solitude, and these days he’s less alone and more lonely, but it’s the way it has to be. It’s just really hard to remember that when Danny smiles at him with warmth and hope. It’s hard to keep himself from taking what he wants when he knows it would be so easy.

All it would take is a kiss.


	2. Shortchanged

The thing is, Danny’s not stupid and he’s not a casual kind of guy. He comes from a big, happy, smotheringly annoying family full of fierce love and loyalty and he has no idea how to do it any other way. He knows he can come on a little strong, be a little overwhelming to people who aren’t used to that kind of depth of emotion. He’s aware he maybe sees more than what’s there some of the time. He’s maybe a little too good at deluding himself that the person he has a romantic relationship with is on the same page as he is. It’s certainly bitten him on the ass more than once, his marriage to Rachel the glaringly obvious example of that.

So the clusterfuck that’s happening between him and Steve, although it’s a lot more of a train wreck than ever before, is not entirely without precedent. Actually it’s pretty much par for the course.

There was Tanya Ivanova in seventh grade who let him follow her around like a puppy and then laughed about it with her bitchy friends.

There was Emily Delany in ninth, tenth, and twelfth grades who broke his heart pretty much once a month for his entire high school career. 

There was even Tony Vecchio in eleventh grade and the summer after graduation who took a revolving cast of pretty girls to movies and beach parties but spent hours attached to Danny at the mouth in the bed of Tony’s beat up blue pickup truck.

He wised up through college and the police academy, learned to guard himself a little better, but there were still a few times he got his heart beaten into a slimy, bloody pulp. Then Rachel crashed into his cruiser and he thought he’d finally found his other half only to have her stomp all over him in her three inch designer stilettos and unfairly overpriced lawyers.

On the upside there was Grace. In Grace he had finally found the love of his life, the only person since his parents to ever return his unconditional love with no reservations and no regrets. He was aware they might hit a few rough patches during her teenage years, but he had faith his Gracie wouldn’t ever abandon him. He sure as hell wasn’t going to abandon her so she was just going to have to suck it up regardless of things like puberty and college boyfriends. They had damn well better be college boyfriends too because Danny had a gun and access to hugely expensive governmental databases and hardware and he wasn’t afraid to use them and….

Wait, where was he?

Oh yeah, Steve.

Steve McGarrett is fucked up beyond anything that should be sustainable by someone without a diagnosed mental illness. Danny is reserving judgment on an undiagnosed one but since he figures he’s never going to get Steve anywhere near a psychiatric professional he may as well resign himself to a large helping of crazy in his day to day existence. Besides, Steve makes raging psychosis look damn good.

God, does Steve look good. And he tastes, smells, and feels even better.

Danny is perhaps a little in over his head on this one.

Steve’s issues have issues and anyone who willingly lives in the house his own father has been gruesomely murdered in should never be allowed near high-grade explosives but what are you gonna do, right?

Steve is obviously a little out of touch with how ordinary people relate to each other in the real world, Danny knows this, but to be personally subjected to it instead of just watching from the sidelines is a unique kind of hell. To be fair, Steve had surprised the ever living fuck out of Danny when he spontaneously blew him in a supply closet on the same floor as the Governor’s office. He still maintains that he was justified in his early assumption that Steve wanted the same thing Danny did. After all Steve started it.

The thing is it’s obvious that he and Steve have very different ideas of what constitutes a meaningful relationship.

On the other hand, it might just be that Steve doesn’t view this as a meaningful relationship at all.

If Danny’s honest with himself he knows that that’s what it is. The kissing thing kind of gave it away.

He was blinded enough by euphoria and lust that he didn’t notice it right away, but Steve never kisses him. Well, Steve kisses him he just never does it first. Danny is the one who kisses Steve and Steve probably just puts up with it as a cost of getting off. He’s pretty sure he’s right because he’s run a few experiments by purposely not kissing Steve during their little interludes and Steve never ever kisses him. During Danny’s other experiments he kisses Steve at every opportunity and Steve kisses back like he could do it for hours and forgo the actual orgasms in the process.

Danny’s man enough to admit he’s a little confused.

Danny’s got to hand it to him though, Steve has got this fuck buddies thing down cold. It’s a good thing there are the daily, sometimes twice daily, get-togethers in locked men’s rooms and hidden corners of various absurdly inappropriate places such as the Palace, HPD headquarters and even a few victims’ and suspects’ houses. Otherwise Danny would never know they were anything other than work colleagues and situational friends and he’s the one getting pinned to uncomfortable metal shelving on a regular basis.

He’s never going to get the smell of pine-sol out of his brown loafers.

The other giveaway that Danny’s alone in the emotional connection department is that Steve never ever has sex with him in anyplace other than a broom closet or some variation thereof. It’s bizarre in the extreme since they spend a ridiculous amount of time in more appropriate and comfortable places together like, oh, Steve’s _house._ Danny’s never been privileged enough to see it, but he’s theoretically sure Steve has a big comfy bed hidden under the eaves or something due to the fact that he’s obsessively derisive of Danny’s sofa bed.

Out of morbid curiosity Danny’s run a few other experiments regarding Steve’s house and he’s come to a few very depressing conclusions. He’s given off a few intentional signals of varying intensity and no matter how subtle or overt he is Steve skillfully ignores and sidesteps any openings Danny gives him. He’s also purposely been aggressively platonic over beers and football scores and there’s nothing there either. No sidelong glances or aborted movements on Steve’s part and Danny would just leave it at that except for the other thing.

The other thing is weird.

As previously stated Danny is a relationship kind of guy. Ergo, he doesn’t do one night stands, fuck buddies, or friends with benefits, like, at all, so he’s new to Steve’s way of doing things. But Steve’s way is full of contradictions and red herrings and Danny has basically despaired of ever cracking the code to Steve’s sexual paradigm, but he’s pretty sure it’s not supposed to include dates.

Steve asks him on a lot of dates. Seriously, in any other relationship with this much time spent together Danny would be preparing to move in and start planning a wedding for Chrissakes. Most of the time Steve doesn’t even ask he just shows up and shanghais Danny into running up mountains or pushing his ‘classic’ car up a mountain or staring at a view of mountains because Steve apparently really, really likes mountains.

There’re also the stealth infiltrations of Grace Weekends to contend with. This is extra super special weird because Danny has _seen_ Steve around children and while he’s the first to admit his baby is a priceless treasure inspiring awe and adoration in all around her, she’s still an eight year old girl with an unhealthy preoccupation with Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez.

There’s also the glitter factor to consider and Danny hates sand, okay, he loathes the stuff, but sand has nothing on pink and silver glitter dust in the getting-all-over-everything Olympic event. Glitter fucking _medals._ It’s the Russian gymnast of miniscule particulate crap and Danny suffers in silence because Grace absolutely loves shiny things more than anything. Somewhere, he doesn’t know where, but he’s blaming Rachel or possibly Rachel’s mother, his daughter has picked up magpie genes.

Basically, Grace is a little girl with all the typical little girl accoutrements and Steve should be avoiding her like the plague, but he’s not. In fact, he seems to be seeking her out and patiently listening to her chatter with all evidence of enjoyment. Hell, she’s Danny’s daughter and even he finds himself wishing she’d pause to breathe between high pitched squeals of joy. Steve has to know what it does to Danny to see his stoic, military disciplined partner flash brilliant grins of worship at his baby because _everyone_ knows the fastest way into Danny’s good books is to fall at the feet of Grace Williams. After all Grace is pure light and happiness and everyone should love her on sight and if they don’t they’ll just have to contend with Danny because his daughter is the best…

Not the point! The point is that Steve is hitting all the buttons that a person seeking Danny’s love and approval should be pushing which goes against all evidence of these pared down ‘relationship’ parameters Steve seems determined to keep to.

Well, whatever. Just what the fuck ever because Danny can’t do it this way, he’s just not built for it and he’s devoting way too much brain power to it so fuck this and fuck Steve McGarrett twice. Danny’s out the door. He’s taking the lessons he learned from Tanya, Emily, Tony, Rachel, and a dozen other disappointments and applying them to this non-relationship as of five minutes ago.

It’s going to suck beyond belief because despite Steve’s really shitty treatment of him Danny kind of unconditionally loves the psychotic bastard. But he’ll deal because he has to and eventually the hurt will start to fade and he’ll stop wanting to beg Steve to love him back. It’ll happen just like all the times before because Steve is not special, dammit, Danny won’t let him be. He’ll soldier on and ignore his battered and scarred up heart. He has plenty of practice after all.

Because Danny’s not stupid.


	3. Heads You Win, Tails I Lose

It hurts, but Steve knew it would, knew he’d miss Danny’s scent in his clothes and the feel of Danny’s skin in his hands. He knew it would be a wrench to have his carte blanche to muss up his partner’s perfect appearance only to help smooth him all down again revoked. To go back to just Danny’s friend and partner after knowing the sound he makes when he comes is tough to take, but Steve knew it would be. He expected it and prepared for it.

He just didn’t expect or prepare enough.

Missing Danny is taking as much, if not more, time and energy for Steve than all his previous obsessing over keeping his boundaries intact. He hadn’t even been aware that he had started to take the brief intimacies Danny allowed for granted until they were suddenly gone. The hurt is more than he ever imagined it would be. He’d had no idea that despite all his precautions the severance of their brief affair, such as it was, would cut so deeply.

That’s not entirely true though. Steve had expected the quick sharp agony of loss. He just hadn’t expected the breadth of it.

It’s a subtle kind of torture to feel every inch of the span between their seats in the car and know he could just reach out and smooth his hand over the short, soft hair that tapers to a point above Danny’s collar except he’s not allowed to. He had never done it in the first place, never let himself give in to the urge, but now it’s an open wound to know he had missed his chance to feel that small pleasure.

Actually that’s the part that hurts the most. Before, when Danny still grinned at being crowded into a dark cramped corner for a hurried orgasm, Steve had denied himself the comfort of reaching out and making it mean more. He had kept himself from having what he wanted and it had taken every ounce of self control to do it. But at the end of the day, it had been his choice to keep the line drawn in the sand. He had been the one to refuse to tip over the edge, but the potential had always been there. He’d had the knowledge that he could have Danny in exactly the way he craved him if he wanted to. He’d had that power.

Danny had maybe understated it a little when he’d accused Steve of having control issues.

And that right there is the crux of it. Steve has control issues that would make God himself raise an eyebrow in disbelief. It’s a defining trait of his, and it’s born of a defining moment, because Steve has been here before.

When he was a teenager his family had been a source of trial and tribulation all wrapped up in typical adolescent melodrama. His mother’s affection was embarrassing, his father’s strictness constraining, and his sister’s clingy brattiness was just a plain pain in the ass. He’d taken it all for granted and expected it to last forever. When you’re fifteen, you and everyone who’s important to you is immortal. Death is amorphous and vague when you only see it in video games and even then you just start over again with the push of a button. Hell, Steve had never even attended a funeral before his mother’s ‘accident’.

That was when his life had spun out of control and he’d hated every second of it. He’d hated being arbitrarily shipped out of the only home he’d ever known. He’d hated being the fish out of water at a new school where nobody knew or cared about him, which had been quite a shock after being the class golden boy at his old school. He’d hated the awkwardness of living with relatives he barely knew and who, no matter how hard they tried, just weren’t ever going to be his family.

So he’d controlled what he could and it had quickly become more necessity than coping mechanism. He could control how hard he studied and therefore his grades. He could control what he put in his body and how hard he pushed himself physically. It was up to him to do everything in his power to garner that coveted recommendation to the Naval Academy by his adopted state’s senator.

Once at Annapolis it was even easier to fall into the strict patterns of being a cadet, then being a naval officer, and then becoming a SEAL. The military purposely bred control freaks and as one of the elite even among his fellow SEALs Steve had been respected for his tenacity, discipline, and focus.

He’d been awarded medals and commendations due to his control. He’d been made a Lieutenant Commander by the age of thirty two because of his mastery of duty over self.

He didn’t even know who he was without it and it all stemmed back to his mother’s death and the need to create order out of chaos. It was the defining moment of his life. He respected himself for turning tragedy into success. He gained confidence as he gained experience and became known for his meticulous tactics. He’d taken the instant obedience of his men and other subordinates as his due because he’d proven incontrovertibly that he was the best man for the job, always.

And then his Dad had been murdered and he’d had to revisit old memories in his childhood home and in that vulnerable state Danny had happened.

Talk about a defining moment.

Within seconds Danny had gotten into an armed standoff with him, then he’d stepped right into Steve’s face and _pulled rank_ on him, and when Steve had tried to slide past him with the toolbox Danny had called him on it forcing him to acquiesce to the Governor’s job offer which he had had no intention of doing whatsoever. The entire exchange took just under fifteen minutes.

And that was just the beginning, because when Steve co-opted him onto the task force Danny had started to complain. And complain. And then complain some more. To say Steve was not used to having someone of inferior rank not only disagree with him but criticize and condemn everything from his methods to his wardrobe would be a laughable understatement.

Steve had fantasized about shooting Danny for the entire day. So when Danny had actually gotten shot he’d had an irrational guilt that his wishing for it had made it happen and so he might have, possibly, reacted badly out of resentment for being made to feel responsible. Okay, so he’d been an asshole and once again Danny hadn’t let him off the hook for it the way his old SEAL team would have simply because Steve was the boss and he’d made his point squarely on Steve’s jaw.

Looking back on it now, Steve could admit he had kind of fallen in love right there.

He hadn’t realized it though, and willful stupidity isn’t Steve’s usual failing but he’s been having a bit of an off year so he’s cutting himself the tiniest bit of slack on that one. However there’s no excuse for the fuck-ton of blinding denial he had indulged in once he’d realized that wanting to make Danny stop talking had morphed into wanting to make Danny stop talking through liberal application of his dick.

For the record, that method had worked better in theory than in practice but it was a hell of a lot of fun to keep repeating the experiment just in case.

So for a brief three months Steve had had what he thought he wanted, which was to ostensibly maintain the status quo while still getting to slake his sexual thirst for Danny on his own terms. Then Danny had ended things in an uncharacteristic lack of any conversation whatsoever. He had simply started to twist away when Steve went to push him into a secluded cranny or just walked off if Steve had tried to catch his eye in a meaningful signal to follow him discreetly to the men’s room.

A half dozen of these brush offs and Steve had understood that things were over. Truthfully, he had realized it the first time it had happened, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself from trying for a few more days just in case Danny would change his mind and Steve would get to keep him.

And he had wanted to keep Danny, he hadn’t even realized how much he had wanted it, but then his pride had kicked in because Steve McGarrett didn’t beg or grovel for anyone and Danny wasn’t about to be the first to bring him to his knees.

Figuratively speaking.

He might have gone on indefinitely in his cloud of pigheaded stubbornness except then Danny had almost died of Sarin poisoning in the middle of an exclusive gated community of all fucked up things and Steve had had an epiphany.

Back before his mom had died Steve had taken it all for granted. He didn’t bother to tell his family he loved them because there had been no need since they were always going to be there. He had thought he’d taken away all the important lessons he could from that time but evidently the universe decided he needed a kick in the ass in order to dislodge his very firmly stuck head.

Steve had been barreling down the same path to regret with Danny by assuming there would always be time to get him back, he just had to make the decision to reach out and grab him. And, hey, there were those nasty control issues again, what a surprise.

And look they came out and bit him on the ass once more because no sooner had Steve decided he was going to corner Danny and do whatever it took to get him back, this time in a real grown up relationship even, when he had walked into Danny’s hospital room and seen a blissful Danny curled up with Rachel in his arms while Grace slept in a little ball on the loveseat three feet away.

Steve may have gone a little crazy at that point because pretty soon after that he decided to storm the Governor’s residence all on his lonesome and ended up charged with Jameson’s murder.

So here he was, two days into God knows how long of solitary confinement doing endless pushups and crunches in an effort to not think about how Chin had let slip that Danny had been an hour from getting on a plane with his pregnant not-so-ex-wife and their daughter back to New Jersey when Steve had gotten royally screwed by Wo Fat.

The worst part is that Danny is still here. He visits Steve every day and keeps him apprised of the efforts to get him exonerated. He displays his loyalty and his friendship to Steve every time he waits on the other side of the window instead of cutting his losses and hopping on a plane to join his family back in Jersey. Steve desperately wishes that Danny would stay for as long as it would take to get Steve free, but he knows he’s fooling himself. The longer he’s in here, the closer he is to the day when Danny’s no longer going to be on the other side of that glass.

So Steve keeps up his pushups and crunches. He puts his back to the bars and grips them above his head to bring his knees to his chest in punishing leg lifts. He spends his one hour a day in the yard running laps at top speed all in a bid to not think about how he’d screwed everything up so spectacularly. Everything he’d wanted and needed had been in the palm of his hand and all he’d had to do was close his fingers and it would have been his, but he’d stupidly tossed it away instead and now it’s too late.

So much for control.

Steve hopes like hell this will be the end to his life’s defining moments because he doesn’t think he can take another shake-up of his worldview. With his luck, he wouldn’t actually physically survive the next one long enough to learn his karmic lesson or whatever the fuck. As fucked up as it is, he prefers the aftermath of losing his mom to the aftermath of losing Danny.

His mom had been gone, his non-existent control snatched away through no fault of his own and the regret had been sharp and breath stealing, but it had at least only been the one time. With Danny he keeps feeling the regret over and over and over.

Every time he sees Danny he goes a little more insane with the what-ifs because Danny is _right there_ and yet completely beyond his reach. The pain is constant and insidious in its dull intensity, no clean cut to scab over and scar. Oh no, this is a seeping wound that just won’t close. In fact, it keeps getting ripped open again every time he sees Danny and knows he doesn’t have the power to reach out anymore. He’s missed his window of opportunity. Now everything; Danny’s distance, Rachel’s pregnancy, the Governor’s murder, and his incarceration are all a direct result of his failure to commit to the path he’d needed to take.

His mother’s death had been soul crushing, but in the end it had had nothing to do with Steve. Losing Danny is entirely his own fault and he knows it.

Somewhere out in the ether there’s a game of chance being played amongst the gods and Steve’s life hangs in the balance. All he can do now is wait to see which way he loses.


	4. Dirty Money

Danny’s an asshole.

No really, hear him out ‘cause the evidence is all right there in brilliant sickening Technicolor high definition 3D shit displayed on a twelve story movie screen. There’re even handy dandy subtitles for the hard of hearing out there. He has screwed the pooch but good this time folks and it’s all Steve’s fault.

Well it’s Danny’s fault but it all comes back to Steve and, hey, Danny’s already a world class dick so he may as well falsely blame his best friend for his own shortcomings while he’s at it. After all it’s not Steve’s fault that he didn’t want Danny the same way Danny wants him.

Yeah, he said wants, ‘cause despite everything that little nugget of wonderful is not dying a dignified death the way he had hoped it would. Evidently his knee jerk reaction to the crushing disappointment was to abandon everything he held dear about his convictions and self-respect and bring everyone around him down in flames too.

Back a few months ago, when Danny had still had scruples, he’d refused to lower himself to be Steve’s pressure release valve instead of his special person. He’d done it because he couldn’t stand to be a convenient fuck when he was so far into lovesick territory he knew he’d have lost himself and forced his stupid heart to be miserably content with whatever crumbs of affection Steve was functional enough to offer. It had been the right call, he’s not sure of much these days, but he’s sure of that. It had taken all of his self restraint and moral fortitude to resist Steve for the _sixteen days_ he hadn’t gotten the message though.

Danny had thought he was going to have to wear a sign around his neck reading ‘Not Steve McGarrett’s Fuck-Toy’ to get his point across. Steve was evidently unused to rejection, which, yeah, completely understandable, just look at the guy. But still, he was pretty damn clear despite his ulcer inducing determination to play by Steve’s rules and not actually verbally acknowledge the whole ‘arrangement’ they had going.

Christ, _arrangement,_ what the hell had he been thinking when he’d assumed they were tripping merrily along the path to life partners or whatever the PC term for it is these days?

He’d been doing okay then. He’d still been under the delusion that he could handle spending every waking minute with Steve and still wean himself of his desperate need to wrap his limbs around the idiot and refuse to let go until his very emotionally unavailable partner promised to love and honor him ‘til death they did part. Or next Tuesday, whichever came first. Denial wasn’t just a river in Egypt and all that crap.

Then Matty had shown up and all hell had broken loose and Danny had just needed _someone_ to lean on for a brief respite and while he’d desperately wanted that someone to be Steve, he’d at least had the presence of mind to not be that pathetic. So he’d gone to Rachel instead.

And that’s when his assholery really took off because he’d fallen into bed with his ex-wife who was married to another man and when exactly did he become _that_ douchebag?

Probably right around the time he realized Steve never kissed him.

He could have written it off as a onetime slip up when he’d been distraught over his brother except he _kept_ sleeping with Rachel even when he found out her marriage was failing, even when she told him leaving him had been a mistake. He’d kept it up after Grace walked in on them sharing an illicit kiss in the kitchen one of the times Stan was on a business trip and Danny was trying to sneak out unnoticed by the staff.

God, _Grace._ What had he done to his baby girl?

He’d kept it up even as he acknowledged to himself that he was doing to Rachel exactly what Steve had been doing to him and that made him the worst kind of hypocrite. And then Rachel had called him out to Sand Island and told him she was pregnant with his baby and he’d half lied to her face.

_“I have a life here? You and Grace are my life.”_

Jesus Christ.

And then, when he’d finally pulled away from promising to return to Jersey with Rachel that night he’d gotten the call that Steve had murdered Jameson.

Oh, he’d known it wasn’t true, that Steve had been set up. His partner was a psycho and borderline homicidal maniac but he wasn’t a cold blooded murderer. He’d smelled Wo Fat’s stench from all the way across Oahu. He’d broken every traffic law known to man to get to the Governor’s mansion just in time to promise Steve that he’d get him out.

Then he’d forgotten Rachel completely.

He’d forgotten the plane to New Jersey, his ex-wife and mother of his child, his actual child and the child he now knew was on the way.

He’d forgotten everything but Steve.

What had followed was easily the most hellish week of his life and that included when the divorce had been finalized and when Rachel had told him she was moving to Hawaii and taking his daughter with her and fuck you very much Daniel.

He’d gone everyday to see Steve and update him on their non-existent progress in clearing his name and every damn time Steve would sit down on the other side of the glass in that awful orange jumpsuit that still managed to bring out the color of his eyes. Steve would lean on the counter, pick up the phone and his half smile would reach all the way to the aforementioned baby blues and Danny would want to simultaneously kick his ass and lick up his Adam’s apple and into his mouth. Honestly, Danny was a fucking mess with the anxiety of trying to get Steve’s name cleared and the bastard would saunter out to visitation like he was coming in from an afternoon by the pool in a five star hotel.

Danny’s a cop, okay, he knows exactly what kind of hell solitary is meant to be. Steve could at least have the decency to look a little ragged around the edges and not like he was playing hooky from work to kick back and read a good book on the beach.

The really infuriating thing was that the first thing out of Steve’s mouth after hello was to ask about the well being of Rachel and the baby.

Every. Damn. Time.

Seven days in a row Steve asked and Danny mouthed a few platitudes and Steve would smile with genuine happiness for him and Danny would have to bite his tongue to keep from screaming and screaming and screaming until someone came along and knocked him out to get him to stop.

The little blip on Steve’s face when Danny had brought out Joe White was marginally satisfying though.

Then Steve had been shanked by Victor Hesse and had 

broken out of prison, for the love of all things holy how was he still _alive_ when he did stupid shit like that, and Danny had truly, honestly had a mini-stroke, swear to fucking _God._

His inner monologue had never used so many italics before he met Steve either. Chalk up another one in the It’s-All-Steve’s-Fault column.

He’d gone a little ballistic on Steve in the middle of Max’s living room, but honestly, who could fucking blame him? And then the tragicomedy in Max’s orange tank of a car with the meeting of eyes in the rearview mirror and Steve’s palpable distress at the second cancellation of the Danny and Rachel Show and Danny had had that sudden urge to scream his head off again.

_“Will you stop looking at me like that? I said I’m fine!”_

_“I just want you to be happy Danny.”_

Danny hadn’t known whether he had wanted to bawl like a baby or laugh himself dead.

Steve wanted him to be happy, huh? Because he could have sworn that ship had sailed when he’d realized he was in love with Steve and there was negative reciprocity there.

Just as a really awful side note, an addendum if you will to Danny’s grocery list of self-loathing, he was only ninety-nine percent sure he believed Rachel when she said the baby wasn’t his. Before Steve, Danny would have chased that one percent down and demanded incontrovertible proof that Stan was the baby’s father. But that was then. Now, Danny’s not sure if he hates Rachel for the out they all needed or loves her for it.

She’s always been stronger than him.

So Steve’s name got cleared and Five-0 was reinstated, minus their trusty rookie, but hey, no worries because here comes the Governor’s hand-picked super-cop who just happens to look like a Victoria’s Secret model and wow, look at the sexual tension between Profiler Barbie and McGQ.

Fantastic.

Seriously, Danny just wants to throw up, his fifteen year streak be damned.

Weston asking them on horseback how long they’d been married was equal parts horribly awkward and hilarious. Danny had kind of warmed up to her just a little bit there because even the new girl could see it.

Take that and fuck _you_ very much _Steven._

Of course, Steve had had to chase down and stop a plane with a _horse_ and a _handgun_ and sweet Lord in Heaven why did he have to fall for Lieutenant Commander Big Damn Hero?

How did Steve get half the shit he did to even _work_ was what Danny wanted to know. Wasn’t anybody else even paying attention? Honestly, if he didn’t see it with his own eyes he would totally call bullshit on this insanity and lock himself in his apartment and refuse to come out until the world made sense again.

Unfortunately, Danny had made all the sense he was going to make of things already. He was in love, like, had found his soul mate for life kind of love. But what the books never told you was what to do when the love of your life just didn’t love you back.

Turning into a raging prick probably wasn’t what the Buddha or Dali Lama would approve of as a spiritual tactic he was pretty sure.

In the meantime, Rachel was working to save a marriage she didn’t want for the sake of a baby that might still be Danny’s. Grace was trying to cope with the confusion and disappointment of her parents not getting back together again like she’d been told. And Steve was still walking around like everything was okay, but being labeled a loose cannon who murdered high profile government officials would take a toll on anybody and the fall out would be spectacular when it caught up to him.

Danny just has to figure out how to get his integrity back so he can look at himself in the mirror again.

But first he’s going to attempt suicide by Jack Daniels so he can go into work tomorrow and be too hungover to care when Steve starts to discretely follow Lori in the direction of the nearest supply closet.

He should have just gotten on the damn plane.


End file.
